Saturday, January 26, 2013
Gordon Wood and Edmund Morgan
First, I'd like to say that Wood's historiography is as engaging as Morgan's--I've enjoyed both, although their depictions of what modern readers view as the cruelty of the 17th and 18th centuries are rough if necessary. Aside from this, Wood's descriptions of the character of early colonial society seems different from that which Morgan describes. The idea of the "disinterested," "self-sacrificing" aristocrat (as Wood puts it in the clip that Chris posted) seems to contrast with the opportunistic character of early settlers in Morgan's book. While Wood doesn't extol the aristocratic system in the section "Monarchy," and while it is clear that the upper classes were not in fact completely disinterested, he makes clear the intricate connections and the very different perception of people and their places in the societal chain in a way that I did not perceive in Morgan's writing. I wonder if what I am seeing is actually the difference between monarchists and republicans and not a fundamental difference in the way that Wood and Morgan portray the early colonists. Did anyone else get a sense of this difference? Thoughts?
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What about structure of the book? How much time, say, does Morgan spend on eighteenth century America versus seventeenth, versus Wood? The idea of disinterestedness and virtue in the eighteenth century is, according to Wood, new and fundamentally different from earlier authority. So we'll be looking on Wednesday for bases of authority and how they change.
ReplyDeleteInteresting to think about--that shift from 17th to 18th century views of the role of government reflected in the everyday lives and behavior of the people. So you are pointing more toward seeing the monarchical ethos of the 17th century in Morgan and the new republicanism in Wood?
ReplyDeleteYes, although Morgan's questions and his intellectual framework is different enough from Wood's that the two aren't seeing eye to eye on many things. Notice that Morgan has a different explanation for the rise of democracy than Wood, and for that matter, a different understanding of liberty and freedom.
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